When Sahara Sunday Spain turned 1, her mother invited friends to a birthday party to bear witness to her daughter's oversize 15-word vocabulary. By 17 months, Sahara could recite the alphabet, and at age 5, she wrote her first poem: "When I drink mother's milk,/ my heart sweats with love."

Now 9, Sahara speaks French fluently, plays the violin and piano, composes music, draws, paints and has traveled extensively in Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia with her mother, Elisabeth Sunday, a photographer. Inspired by everything from fleeting light caught in a stairwell, (Quick!/ Be an angel walking out of the/ light that I see,/ before it fades into a silent/ darkness), to tears and fish, she continues to write verse.

Last year, HarperCollins paid Sahara a mid-five-figure advance for a book of her poems and illustrations. "If There Would Be No Light," a 113-page hardcover book with an initial printing of 15,000, came out in January.

Impressive, but on a 7 a.m. BART trip to school, Sahara -- curly hair tightly pulled into a braid, toast in hand -- doesn't sound like a prodigy or poet. She sounds 9.

Audrey, she says, is the nicest teacher in the world. The couches in their classroom have names, Mr. Stripey and Mrs. Bouncy. They also have mice, hamsters and Siamese fighting fish. The girl hamster is in love with the boy mouse. So they think! The fish are beautiful, oh my goodness, but one kid put two together and the woman ate the man. It was a bad relationship. "Bug!" she squeals, every time she catches sight of a Volkswagen Bug.

Each weekday, Sahara and her mom leave their West Oakland home and take BART to Daly City, where Sahara catches a school bus to the wooded 33-acre campus of the Nueva School, a private school for gifted children in Hillsborough.

Around 8:30 a.m. -- after Stardust, Tickles, Fuzzy and the other pets have been properly greeted, after the hamster has pooped on someone, after a tiny girl in shiny pink clogs takes attendance -- class begins.

Audrey Fairchild, an obviously experienced teacher and extremely pleasant woman, teaches the third-graders two new letters in American Sign Language. "If we're looking at you but not listening, you can just sign shut up!" one boy blurts out. Announcements are followed by show-and-tell.

A girl with wide eyes the color of a swimming pool tells an elaborate story involving a castle, a magical bubble and a machine gun. The class learns the word "anachronism."

Nueva School is teeming with precocious children, and teachers dislike singling out students. Sahara, they will all say after a fashion, is one of the normal, great kids at the school.

Like many other 9-year-olds, she likes playing tag, sometimes grows frustrated with her friends and has to be encouraged (six more bites!) to finish her lunch. Her sweet smile shows off newly straightened teeth, and she appears to be a genuinely nice kid. Asked about her closest friends in the class, she diplomatically names each person.

'HEIGHTENED MATURITY'

"She has an almost heightened maturity about not wanting to be more wonderful than the next person," Fairchild said. Sahara's poems, she added, occasionally make her cry. "She has an innate ability to feel things deeply and a beautiful way of sharing those feelings in language."

A slew of publications have printed stories about Sahara, but she isn't allowed to read them until she is 13. Her mother doesn't want her to take the articles too seriously, whether they're positive or not -- and the press has been both. The New York Times Sunday Magazine published an extensive four-page spread Feb. 4, though the reporter seemed slightly underwhelmed by Sahara's accomplishments. Some critics have dismissed the poems as "too Hallmark," and the British press, especially, was snippy about the size of Sahara's advance. "Art is valuable," her mother said in response. "Everyone should get more than they do."

The glamour of young Sahara's life has also raised eyebrows. Sunday counts some celebrities among her collectors, and a few (Bonnie Raitt, Bill Cosby) contributed back-cover blurbs. Gloria Steinem wrote the introduction.

There's also the matter of Sahara's famous father, Johnny Spain, one of the San Quentin Six who stood trial for the 1971 shootout at San Quentin Prison that killed three guards and three prisoners. Spain was convicted of murder in the uprising, but his conviction was overturned, and he was released from prison in 1988. Sahara's mother, who divorced Spain in the early '90s, refuses to say much about him: "It mystifies me why it should be about him. He's not in her life."

But those adult concerns are remote from this sunny classroom where the class has set aside the times-tables and homemade newspapers. A half-dozen giggly girls are nibbling on their lunches and playing the game "telephone."

SINGING IN THE CAR

Recess is followed by chorus, physical education and art. Sahara, a member of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, leaves school early for a rehearsal. Her mother drives her and two older girls, who sit in the back and sing all the way to the city.

Rehearsal ends, at last, at 6 p.m. Though her mother can see a certain heaviness around her eyes, Sahara claims she's not tired. She hasn't talked about writing poetry at all today. But in the car, in the dark, she says that when she writes poetry, she becomes someone different.

"I'm touched by something and it goes very deep inside of me. It touches my heart and my heart rings and wants to answer it, so it replies with a poem. The poem represents a thank-you," she says.

Then she giggles in her car seat and squirms. "Bug!" she shouts, "Bug!"